MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon Review: Core i9 Value?
Why you can trust Tom's Hardware
How We Test
We’re comparing the current MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon to our first-reviewed Z390 sample, the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master, as well as the two models that the new boards are intended (by their manufacturers) to replace, the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon and Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7, respectively.
Sound | Integrated HD audio |
Network | Integrated gigabit networking |
Graphics Driver | GeForce 399.24 |
The same platform that cooled the ten cores of our Core i9-7900X works equally well with the eight cores of the Core i9-9900K, as we’ll show in the overclocking evaluation on the next page.
Comparison Products
Benchmark Settings
Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings | |
PCMark 8 | Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft) |
3DMark 13 | Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets |
SiSoftware Sandra | Version 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth |
DiskSPD | 4K Random Read, 4K Random Write128K Sequential Read, 128K Sequential Write |
Cinebench R15 | Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark |
CompuBench | Version 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing |
Application Tests & Settings | |
LAME MP3 | Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
HandBrake CLI | Version: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x265 mp4 |
Blender | Version 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark |
7-Zip | Version 16.02THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9" |
Adobe After Effects CC | Release 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark-driven routine |
Adobe Photoshop CC | Release 2015.5.0, 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy) |
Adobe InDesign CC | Release 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark-driven routine |
Adobe Illustrator | Release 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark-driven routine |
Game Tests & Settings | |
Ashes of the Singularity | Version 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920 x 1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920 x 1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA |
F1 2015 | 2015 Season, Abu Dhabi track, RainMedium Preset, no AFUltra High Preset, 16x AF |
Metro: Last Light Redux | Version 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920 x 1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920 x 1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
The Talos Principle | Version 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
MORE: Best Motherboards
MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard
MORE: All Motherboard Content
Current page: How We Test
Prev Page Software & Firmware Next Page Benchmark Results & Final AnalysisStay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
-
rantoc They say its SLI capable but yet have the same "stupid" 3 slots spacing resulting in the typical air starvation of the main card since it will be obstructed by the second card. Todays big custom air cooled cards are 2.5 to 3 pcie slots wide, not the old typical 2 pcie - When will the MB makers "evolve" to the new width of the cards for multigpu and who will be the first?Reply -
Crashman
Even the founder's edition cards are only two slots, and most of the oversized cards are 2.5 slots. A 3-slot cooling design is a defective design, and such cards should be called out for that. We're already putting the top x16 slot in the case's 2nd slot hole to make space for oversized CPU coolers, voltage regulators and DIMM cooling, and there's a scarcity of 8-slot cases, so two three-slot cards' at 4-slot spacing doesn't even make sense. For those reseaons, if I review a board with the 2nd x16 slot aligned to the cases 6th card hole, I'll probably just write it off as a bad idea.21416966 said:They say its SLI capable but yet have the same "stupid" 3 slots spacing resulting in the typical air starvation of the main card since it will be obstructed by the second card. Todays big custom air cooled cards are 2.5 to 3 pcie slots wide, not the old typical 2 pcie - When will the MB makers "evolve" to the new width of the cards for multigpu and who will be the first?
-
wakoavo Great informative article !Reply
I have a question: Since the MPG z390 Gaming AC has the same VRM design, would that mean that it would be ok to pair a 9900k with it ? I recently got the Gaming AC model (won it online lolz) and was wondering if it would be able to control the 9900k xD -
Crashman
They're the same board, this one even has the slot for the AC card, so everything said here applies there.21478211 said:Great informative article !
I have a question: Since the MPG z390 Gaming AC has the same VRM design, would that mean that it would be ok to pair a 9900k with it ? I recently got the Gaming AC model (won it online lolz) and was wondering if it would be able to control the 9900k xD